Sunesis forms research alliance with University of California

Under the terms of the agreement, the university (UCSF) is granted a limited license to utilize Sunesis’ fragment-based drug discovery technology Tethering, for academic purposes. UCSF intends to leverage Sunesis’ technology to identify novel small molecule drug candidates.

In return, Sunesis receives an exclusive royalty-free license to any improvements to the Sunesis technology or fragment libraries that emerge from UCSF’s research. In the event that any small molecules are discovered using Sunesis’ technology, Sunesis will have a right of first negotiation to in-license the compounds.

UCSF is precluded from utilizing the technology for commercial purposes and from conducting research in the kinase field or on any other drug target on which Sunesis is currently working.

“Through this license we have created a win-win arrangement between UCSF and Sunesis. The arrangement enables Dr James Wells, our founder who now heads up the Small Molecule Discovery Center at UCSF, to extend the application of Tethering into new areas of drug discovery, such as the identification of novel sites and inhibitors of allosteric sites on promising drug targets,” said Daniel Swisher, Sunesis’ president and CEO.